Robert Walker - Final Edge

"Me, operate on my own cheek by guiding you?"

"Why not? We've got the mirror." She swung a high- powered mirror on a swivel arm over the tabletop.

"I'd have to be alert, no anesthetic. It could be painful. I could pass out, botch the whole job."

"Damn wuss, Arthur. You tell me what to do, walk me through it, and I'll remove the bloody thing while you're under. We can use the chloroform, or we can just deaden the area around the mole, so you won't feel a thing." She appeared genuinely excited by the prospect of his being under her complete control. "You do trust me, don't you, Arthur?"

"A bandage over my cheek will only draw more attention."

"Then we bandage your whole damned head if need be. God, quit complaining."

"Forget about it. I'll take my chances with the mole."

"But if it'll help ease your worries, Arthur…"

Arthur grabbed the scalpel from her, cutting himself, cursing and tossing the instrument onto a tray behind him, where it clattered and where she couldn't reach it. "Enough with that. It's not happening."

"God, Artie, baby, take it easy. You hurt yourself. I was only funning you." She quickly wrapped his bleeding finger in a bandage.

"You changed the subject on me. I want to know why you're so bent on destroying this Dr. Sanger and this detective."

Outside, a long, rumbling thunderclap got the dogs braying again. Lauralie replied, "That bitch, Sanger… she destroyed me!"

"Sweetheart, love…you're not destroyed. You are beautiful and vibrant and alive and-and young, with- with your whole life ahead of you. We should be busy making a life together, a life for ourselves, a life with a future. I love you, Lauralie."

"When I'm done with Sanger and her man, then we'll talk about a life and a future, darling, but not before. Now stuff her breasts into the damned box. I knew I should have gotten the larger one!"

Arthur forced the severed second breast into the impossible space allotted. Lauralie closed the flaps and taped it shut. She placed the label over the top, patted the bulging box, and said, "It's done, all ready for overnight shipment."

"You're not going to be happy until you use up every part of the Lourdes woman, are you?"

"Arthur, you are beginning to get on my nerves. Now, what do you say to my removing that disgusting mole on your cheek?"

"Damn it, Lauralie, I thought we were off that subject for tonight."

"You think the cops and the news people are going to be off that subject tonight? We've got to do something about the damn mole. I never told you, but it has always bothered me, like…like the old man's dead eye in Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart."

"W-what's that supposed to mean?" He unconsciously touched the mole on his left cheek.

"I look at you, and it's all I see sometimes."

"Cutting the damn thing off may be the only way I can escape capture, but my students, my colleagues, my patients-that is my patients' owners-they know what I look like, Lauralie."

"No one'll ever believe you could possibly be the Post- it Ripper, Arthur. Everyone loves you. You make their animals well!"

"Mrs. Toohey's dog died in my care last month! Look, I know the police sketch isn't perfect, but it is close, and any one of the people that come into my practice, my receptionist even, could make the connection, and all it takes is a single telephone call, and I'm sitting behind bars being grilled by professionals who know how to make a man incriminate himself. They can even do it to an innocent man. Imagine what they can do to me!"

She allowed the thought to sink in. "All right, all right…so what you're saying is that even if you had the mole removed, some people who know you would become suspicious because you had the mole removed, and there's no getting away from this damnable mole either way, right? Out, out damned spot, like Lady Macbeth. So… Arthur, no small operation on that mole is going to help us now. Correct?"

"I suppose, yes, yes, that's what I'm saying, so it makes sense to maybe go overseas. I have some money saved up and-and-and I'm thinking of your safety too, sweetheart…sweetheart. I would hate myself if…if, you know, if anything should happen to you, to us."

"Come here, sugar." Her hands and arms, empty now, opened wide to him, inviting him in.

"What?"

"Come the hell over here, lover, now!"

He came around the table toward her.

"I think you need a good hug and a feel," she said.

Arthur dropped his head in a hangdog fashion, grinned, and opened his arms to her. She wrapped him in her arms where they stood against the stainless-steel table she had backed him into. "Want to make love on the steel?" she asked.

"Whataya mean? Now?" He looked over his shoulder at the table, empty of any of Lauralie's parts, but alongside the saw resting there, the surface was littered with bits and pieces of chewed flesh and bodily fluids.

She pressed herself tighter against him. "Now, right now," she whispered naughtily in his ear.

"But it's all filthy from the cutting and-"

"Just get naked. I'll spray it down with the hose while you get naked for me, okay?"

"It's going to be cold as hell against the skin."

"Arthur, get undressed and lay down! You're going to have the time of your life." She lifted the saw, putting it aside, found the hose, and rinsed off the operating table with warm soapy water. Water and human tissue and debris swept down the built-in sewage drain along each side of the table, taking the residue and blood to a tank that Arthur had ingeniously attached to the underside of the table.

Arthur stripped as she worked to clean the table. "We'll warm up this ol' steel right quickly, Arthur," she was saying as he tested the cold steel, first with his hands, then, climbing onto the flat surface, with elbows and knees. He squinted with the chill of it, despite the warm water she'd used. She turned the warm water hose on him now, laughing.

Finally, he eased onto his back, the sensation creating a trembling in him, the exact opposite of sliding down into a steaming hot tub of water, this gradual getting used to a chilling surface.

His eyes closed against the cold pain to his backside, Arthur said, "Never imagined I'd ever be making love to a beautiful young woman on one of my operating tables."

"One of your dogs maybe!" she joked, snickering.

'Told my receptionist we had to sell the table to pay for the increase in rent on the office. She bought it, but when she sees the books again, she'll know I was lying. Guess I'll have to drop a hint that I've been gambling again. She knows about my habit with the horses."

"Arthur, please shut up, close your eyes, baby, and get your mind off all these worries."

He closed his eyes, comfortable now on his back, hardening at her gentle touch. "God, Lauralie, I wish we were in Paris or maybe London…at the race track even…you, me together without a care, just enjoying the breeze, the ponies, the excitement of the race, sex afterwards…"

"Dream on, Artie, baby," she said, bringing down the rotary saw against his chest, clicking the on switch, and plunging its biting, grinding titanium steel into his heart.

His startled brown eyes flew open at the sound of the saw long enough to catch the geyser of blood that blinded him, a spray that likewise discolored Lauralie's features, making a fiend of her-the last thing he saw before dying.

"No more goddamn questions out of you," she muttered over the still-twitching body. "And you needn't worry that the cops are going to put you away, Arthur. Nobody can hurt you now, and you never have to worry about hurting me or incriminating me in any way. Such a dear you've been and so patient throughout this long ordeal."

It had beed a long time since Lucas had completely relaxed, but here at Meredyth Sanger's favorite hideaway, her family's country ranch retreat, a majestic log cabin and stables, proved dreamlike, convincing them both to call in the next morning to take the day off. Both of them had been physically and mentally exhausted by the pace of events, and Doctor Sanger had prescribed a full day of horseback riding, canoeing, swimming, and making love. The day became an idyllic Huckleberry Finn extravagance, a day without responsibilities or worries to plague them. Doctor and detective, for a time, freed their minds of the horrors Lauralie and her boyfriend had dealt them unrelentingly for days now. For the time being, the couple had gotten their lives back, while others back in Houston continued to work their more objective and scientific angles on the ongoing case of the Post-it Ripper, a name being used now in the press for the odd-looking, mole-faced killer gracing the tube and the front pages of the papers.